Religious Freedom Restoration Act - Indiana

This is a popular story that has been circulated in conservative media circles over the last few days. I think it's gotten about 100,000 likes on Facebook, but it is far from the truth. As with any good fabrication, there is enough truth interwoven into the fabric of the story for it to seem plausible, but let me explain how they are different. It is true that there was a federal bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993, as well as many other such bills that exist at the state level in some twenty other states or so. That said, that is where their similarities end. The federal bill protects citizens from government interference. The other states besides Indiana who have such laws also protect the religious freedoms of private citizens from government interference. What makes Indiana's law different and controversial is that it is the first of it's kind to specifically state that this law protects one private citizen from another private citizen. So, in truth, this bill does absolutely nothing more to protect a private citizen from the government than the federal bill already provided. What it does do is allows one private citizen to discriminate against another private citizen under the auspices of religious freedom. If you don't believe me take a look at Section 9 of the bill and see for yourself.
Back in February a panel of about 30 law professors took a look at this bill and decided that the scope of it would leading to never ending problems in the courts and would actually erode the religious liberties rather than protect them. If you take a look at section 5 you will also see that the Indiana law allows an individual to claim that their religious liberties have been violated “whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.”
So nice try, but you are wrong.

 

much better detail. I am feeling you are coming more to my way of thinking.

 

Awesome. I wonder if they allow those crazy christian snake churches too. What's really cool about the hemp thing is I wonder if they now get the tax free status other religions get.

 

if they do not it would be a violation of their religious freedoms.....what's good for the goose....

 

Its a reaction to gay marriage rulings in the states, i imagine most of these states will suffer.
It sets up a affirmative defense for those businesses that actually have the balls to refuse to serve people based on whatever.
This will fail.

 

Apparently Pence held a news conference today asking that the bill be re-written to more closely mirror other such laws in other states and the federal law. I will wait to see what the new language looks like, but if he holds to his word then I applaud the man for fixing it.

 

It was intended to stop crap like this:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/03/2...intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obinsite
And before you blow it off as Fox News, it is actually from the AP. My understanding in addition to the article, the man in the article is not the one that filed the complaint. Mancha posted above if I understand correctly that the Constitution guarantees I have to give up my belief for the belief of someone else? "The cost of your personal believe is the price you pay for someone else's personal belief. That is guaranteed in the Constitution." is the exact wording used. She sold him flowers regularly, but declined to participate in a same sex wedding. I know at my wedding, the florist participated in the event over the two day period. You shouldn't get sued or fined or forced to participate in something you don't believe in. I applaud you for having the open mind about the intent if indeed it does get rewritten in the spirit for which it was intended according to the Governor.

 

and if you dont believe in serving some one because of what color or race they are, where does it stop?

"my version of Christianity as a Klan member allows me the right not to serve blacks, jews, etc"
this is how this law is written in its form right now.
just claim religious belief and you are in the clear.

 

Not entirely true.
"Indiana was an outlier before the new law because neither its laws nor courts unambiguously protected religious liberty. Amish horse-drawn buggies could be required to abide by local traffic regulations. Churches could be prohibited from feeding the homeless under local sanitation codes. The state Attorney General even ruled Indiana Wesleyan University, a Christian college which hires on the basis of religion, ineligible for state workforce training grants.

In February, 16 prominent First Amendment scholars, some of whom support same-sex marriage, backed Indiana’s legislation. “General protection for religious liberty is important precisely because it is impossible to legislate in advance for all the ways in which government might burden the free exercise of religion,” they explained.

That hasn’t stopped the cultural great and good from claiming Indiana added the religious defense in private disputes as a way to target gays. If this is Indiana’s purpose, and there’s no evidence it is, this is unlikely to work.

The claim is that this would empower, say, florists or wedding photographers to refuse to work a gay wedding on religious grounds. But under the RFRA test, such a commercial vendor would still have to prove that his religious convictions were substantially burdened."

For someone claiming religious reasons, "would also come up against the reality that most courts have found that the government has a compelling interest in enforcing antidiscrimination laws. In all these states for two decades, no court we’re aware of has granted such a religious accommodation to an antidiscrimination law. Restaurants and hotels that refused to host gay marriage parties would have a particularly high burden in overcoming public accommodation laws.

In any event, such disputes are rare to nonexistent, a tribute to the increasing tolerance of American society toward gays, lesbians, the transgendered, you name it.

The paradox is that even as America has become more tolerant of gays, many activists and liberals have become ever-more intolerant of anyone who might hold more traditional cultural or religious views. Thus a CEO was run out of Mozilla after it turned out that he had donated money to a California referendum opposing same-sex marriage."

 

"Part of the new liberal intolerance is rooted in the identity politics that dominates today’s Democratic Party. That’s the only way to explain the born-again opportunism of Hillary Clinton, who tweeted: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love.”

By that standard, Mrs. Clinton discriminated against gays because she opposed gay marriage until March 2013. But now she wants to be seen as leading the new culture war against the intolerant right whose views she recently held.

The same reversal of tolerance applies to religious liberty. When RFRA passed in 1993, liberal outfits like the ACLU were joined at the hip with the Christian Coalition. But now the ACLU is denouncing Indiana’s law because it wants even the most devoutly held religious values to bow to its cultural agenda on gay marriage and abortion rights.

Liberals used to understand that RFRA, with its balancing test, was a good-faith effort to help society compromise on contentious moral disputes. That liberals are renouncing it 20 years after celebrating it says more about their new intolerance than about anyone in Indiana."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-...trending_now_1